WD TV Live Hub

WD TV Live Hub with 1TB hard drive

What is the WD TV Live hub? It’s a convenient and easy way to bring all those media files together in one central location and watch them straight from your TV. Not only the files on your computer, but also streams directly from the Internet. And when all your files are accessible to the WD TV Live Hub, you can stream them to any other location in your house that is set up to handle the media stream. It can even send multiple streams at the same time. Think of it as a mini media server under your TV. But what really sets it apart from the rest of the streaming space is the onboard 1TB hard drive. Let’s break down the features.

WD TV Live Hub file support

When Western Digital first started making a device of this nature, they undoubtedly wanted to learn from the mistakes made by some of their competitors, namely the Apple TV’s lack of file support. So here are the files that the WD Hub can handle.

Video

AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/ 2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9

Audio

MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

photo

JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

This comes in very handy when you’ve collected a bunch of strange and disparate files from multiple locations that got lost in a sea of ​​folders that only exist on your hard drive. (You know you do.) Well, this can help sort everything out in a very handy way, and who knows, you might even rediscover some old videos that you loved when you first saw them, but just forgot you had them.

stream

A computer is not essential to benefit from the WD Hub. It connects directly to the Internet and allows you to access online services. Here are some of them in no particular order.

Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, Pandora, Facebook, Flickr, Live 360, Media Fly, AccuWeather.

storage capacity

There are several other devices on the market that are similar to this one. But like I said at the beginning, what really sets the WD TV Live Hub apart from the rest is the onboard 1TB hard drive. How much can 1 TB hold, you might be wondering?

• Up to 285,000 digital photos
• Up to 250,000 songs (MP3)
• Up to 25,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
• Up to 76 hours of digital video (DV)
• Up to 440 hours of DVD quality video
• Up to 120 hours of HD video

Well, that’s a lot of time spent in front of the TV. And how do you get all those files in and out of the WD Hub? On the hub itself, it has Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 front and rear, HDMI 1.4 (that’s the latest version), composite A/V, component video, optical audio. The only thing you need to provide are the cables. All of this for around $200.00.

Final Thoughts

That’s not to say that Western Digital has come up with the perfect device. While the navigation is pretty basic and easy to use, it still requires a bit of navigation to find what you’re looking for. All in all a solid product with good support from Western Digital. After a little setup, you’ll be watching movies, looking at photos, and going through all those forgotten files on the big screen.

Thanks to Jason Craig | #Live #Hub